Three decades after the 1979 Islamic revolution, the Guards continue to be the military guardian of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's Islamic ideology, but also own large tranches of the country's economy.

On Sunday, seven senior Guards commanders were among up to 35 people killed in a suicide attack in the restive southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Iranian officials say the attack was carried out by Sunni rebels who have targeted the Guards repeatedly in the past.

The Guards, who claim to have the capability to face down any threat internal or external, have had an increasingly high profile since the hotly disputed June re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Guards' militia wing -- the feared Basij, which has hundreds of thousands of volunteers in training at some 11,000 centres across the country -- was at the forefront of the suppression of the mass protests that followed the vote.

Some of the Guards' commanders have accused supporters of Ahmadinejad's main challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi of planning a "soft revolution" to topple the regime.

The Guards also flexed their muscles just days ahead of the crucial October 1 talks in Geneva over Tehran's nuclear programme by test-firing several medium-range missiles to the fury of world powers.

The military force was also in the headlines amid reports that it has acquired the country's state-run telecommunications company as part of the Ahmadinejad government's stuttering privatisation programme.

It is the growing economic power of the Guards that Washington has been targeting for several years by designating the force a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and an organ of state terrorism.

The Guards now permeate all areas of Iranian society, with their engineering arm picking up massive contracts and former cadres, like ex-commander Mohsen Rezai who has stood twice for the presidency, moving into politics.

In business, the Guards now reap an increasingly substantial income which the United States is seeking to block.

In 2006, the Guards won a contract worth more than two billion dollars to develop phases 15 and 16 of Iran's biggest gas field, South Pars, and another contract of around one billion dollars to build a pipeline towards Pakistan.

It is also part of a consortium contracted to build a high speed rail link between Tehran and the central city of Isfahan, shipping ports on Iran's south coast, and a major dam in Khuzestan province.

The Revolutionary Guards work in parallel with the regular armed forces but have their own land, sea, air and missile units.

Their missile capabilities have aroused the greatest international concern as their Shahab-3 medium range missile has Israel and US bases in the Middle East within reach.

The Guards have also repeatedly warned they have US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan under watch, implying the force will pound these targets and could shut down the sea lanes to the oil-rich Gulf if the United States launches a military attack.

Now believed to number more than 100,000 troops, the corps was was intended to counter perceived threats from leftist guerrillas and army officers who remained loyal to the US-backed shah overthrown in the 1979 revolution.

In an astonishing show of power in May 2004, the Revolutionary Guards shut down Tehran's new international airport the day it opened, in protest at a Turkish-Austrian consortium that had alleged business dealings with Israel.

Share This Article With Planet Earth

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Related Links
News From Across The Stans

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News